Dispute at the Crossroads
by Misura
Summary: Honda and Otogi get lost on their way to Shizuka's wedding. shortie


Dispute at the crossroads

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Warnings/notes: Honda, Otogi, mentioned Kenta/Shizuka, and past Honda/Shizuka and Otogi/Shizuka, snippet.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh. 'Dispute at the Crossroads' is also the name of a piece of Irish music.

written at 14th march 2005, by Misura, for the livejournal-community daily15. (word: intersection)

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Of all the days Otogi could have chosen to get lost, obviously, he -had- to go and pick Shizuka's wedding-day, Honda mused sourly, wishing he'd never accepted Otogi's offer for a ride.That he'd actually more or less begged for said offer, since his bike had broken down earlier that week, and Joey'd been unable to help him out, was fully beside the point.

In theory, Honda supposed, he could -no, wait, he -should- have opted for public transportation, only one look at the complex schedule and map had convinced him his odds of actually getting where he wanted to be were slim at best. And, heck, you could say a lot about Otogi, but not that he didn't have a pretty cool car.

"Any idea if we should turn right or left here?" asked the insufferable arrogant idiot whom Honda never should have trusted to be able to correctly read something as complicated as the map that had been included with both their wedding-invitations.

"How should -I- know? You said you knew the way!" Honda snapped. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, if not to Otogi, he was a bit tense, and taking that out on Otogi a little. Still, Honda felt he had some right to be annoyed.

"The route seemed straightforward enough on the map." Otogi shrugged.

"It -was- straightforward!" Honda fumed. "You'd have to have been a complete moron to misread it!"

"Don't get insulting," Otogi said absently. "Besides, don't you think that maybe it's better like this?"

"Better like what?" Honda demanded, his mood not exactly improving by Otogi apparently not considering their current situation all that bad. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, not so long ago, you were pretty hung up on Shizuka, if I remember correctly. You practically worshiped the ground she walked on, you never missed a chance to see her ... heck, you even got into some fights with Joeyabout her." Otogi turned his head to look at him. "Do you really want to see her getting married to some other guy?"

Honda frowned. "If she wants to, why not?" Maybe if it had been Yugi or Anzu asking him, he'd have elaborated, admitting that he hadn't precisely been happy when he'd first heard the news. Still, after Battle City, they'd met only rarely, and she'd never actually given any sign of valueing his company more than that of, say, Mai or Anzu.

Absence, Honda had been forced to conclude, didn't always make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes, it just made you start to forget, bit by bit, until you could receive a wedding-invitation and not want to kill the guy who was to be the bridegroom.

"I just told you why not." Otogi sounded almost angry. "I thought you were in love with Shizuka!"

"I was." Strangely, as Otogi's mood seemed to worsen, Honda's seemed to improve. "Past tense. Now, I'm not in love with her anymore, so I can just be happy for her that she's found someone special. Besides, since we're talking about love anyway, what about you? You weren't exactly avoiding her either, were you?"

"Oh, that." Otogi made a waving gesture. "That was just to bug you, actually."

Honda counted to ten. Twice.

"I mean, sure, I liked her a lot, but it wasn't -more- than that, if you know what I mean," Otogi continued. "And look, if she'd picked you over me, well, then you could have been pretty sure she was serious about you, couldn't you? Not many girls can resist someone like me."

Honda'd have slapped him for that, had Otogi sounded even the slightest bit smug about that. He didn't though, so Honda merely nodded, not quite sure of how else to respond.

"If she'd picked me, then you'd have known that you could just give up. And it's not like I don't have plenty of experience with dumping people gently, so it'd all have turned out all right in the end."

"Maybe," Honda acknowledged. "What's done is done, anyway, and she didn't pick either of us in the end. And all this talk about the past is all very nice and informative, but it won't bring us any closer to finding out which direction to take. It definitely won't make me forget that it'll be -your- fault if we end up being late for Shizuka's wedding either," he warned Otogi.

Otogi grinned. "Why, we'll turn left, of course, like it clearly says on the map, if you'd bothered to look at it these past hours. As to being late ... " Otogi's grin widened.

Honda firmly told himself that only girls shrieked as their boyfriends drove a bit faster than was permitted.

OWARI

A/N: -frowns- That last line wasn't meant to imply what it might look like it implies. I just ... couldn't figure out how to have it say what I wanted it to say in another way.


End file.
